When you own and develop hotels, you’re always looking for the “next big thing” that will separate your property from your competitors’ properties and bring excitement to the community. 

This often manifests itself in new restaurant outlets, a singular lobby, and pieces of technology or design updates that ‘wow’ potential customers. 

However, updates like this typically only cater to those who stay at the hotel, segmenting of a huge potential market a property can tap into: locals. 

When a property, engages locals at a high level, it adds a steady stream of revenue that can help the property’s bottom line during slower times of the year. It also provides a groundswell of support for the hotel from a marketing standpoint. The more locals that have positive interactions with your brand, the more likely you are to receive positive feedback on review sites, which we all know leads to more interest in your property. 

Having locals patronizes a hotel property also translates it to opportunities to stay over guests to network, which is one of the fundamental principles of why people travel in the first place. 

Hotels that are seeking to engage locals need to think about what offerings are more likely to bring someone through the door. Like a happening lounge, unique restaurants and luxury spa offerings. These offers hotel owners and developers an opportunity to capture the attention of a local who is looking for a relaxing day off, a night out on the town, or a place to grab a bite to eat and be seen. 

A good hotel spa is normally 10% of the total hotel revenue and is often down priority as a revenue making part of the hotel business. The thought that the spa is most an extra service the hotel needs to keep their status, has to be changed. 

The goal of any hotel owner or developer looking to engage locals should be to offer a space that encourages gatherings in the manner that best fits the locale. Remember, the idea is to provide a space where locals will want to bring friends on a regular basis. A green tea date with a friend with a spa experience, a business meeting in a relaxing atmosphere with an organic lunch, a stress down for the weekend package and so on. 

The spa offerings at a hotel can be a great tool to attract locals, looking for a completely unique spa experience. Whether a hotel bring in visiting practitioners, offers a product with a wow effect or simply create an unmatched atmosphere that leaves a great impression, locals will talk about it and want to go back. Overall, by putting in the effort to develop places where locals can work, relax, eat, and enjoy their city any time of the year, hotels can build in a steady revenue stream they can count on to help boost the bottom line. 

A spa could be just a relax area or it could be a journey that invites the guest to stay much longer; that has healthy organic food, a silent workroom, training classes that appeal your residents of the local community. The key here is to minimize the pain points and embrace the changes and nuances that need to be provided to locals to get them to periodically visit your hotel spa. 

If you want to make a certain service popular, then some people must be the first to try it out and share it with their network. So, don’t hesitate to give out some freebies! Of course, make sure that you offer them to the right people, who would be able to influence new potential guests from the audiences you wish to target. 

A special closed event is a great idea in order to protect the exclusive character of the spa. Then use selected influencers to ensure that they would attract the right audience. You want a excitement to be part of such an exclusive event and then shared with their network in a more intense and engaging way. At the same time, new potential guests who are informed about the event and the spa will be curious to visit the spa, try its services and be part of such a unique product. 

To find the perfect guests for the spa to still keep it exclusive has been done with a luxury spa in Stockholm. They called it “The secret treasure hunt”. They used this merchandising by choosing high-end luxury boutiques as the places where free-entrance keys were hidden; there was not even a chance of not finding the perfect audience for their spa! 

The profile of these boutiques’ guests did match perfectly with a spa lover’s profile. Also, the free keys gave an important opportunity for generating new, loyal spa guests and a word of mouth. 

As a spa you must always work hard on trying new things. So, let your marketing team be creative and socially oriented, trying out playful and original concepts beyond the ordinary, that will stand out from the competition. 

Promotional activity is also paramount to maintain locals’ engagement with any given hotel spa. That means a proper public relations and community outreach strategy needs to be developed and sustained at the hotel and spa level. This will help to keep the spa and hotel top of mind for locals and traveling visitors, alike.